


Fear Death by Water

by TheSkyLarkin



Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [1]
Category: Endeavour (TV)
Genre: Blood, Canon-Typical Violence, Endeavour Morse Whump, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Mentioned Jim Strange, Mentioned Peter Jakes, Mentioned Reginald Bright, Whump, Whumptober 2020
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-01
Updated: 2020-10-01
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:53:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26733901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSkyLarkin/pseuds/TheSkyLarkin
Summary: The Hanged Man. Fear death by water.The Waste Land(T. S. Eliot, 1922)Another serial killer with a flair for the dramatic appears in Oxford, keeping the officers of Cowley Station CID in suspense... well, maybe that's just Morse. Set between Series 1 and 2.Challenge: Whumptober 2020Prompts: No. 1 - “Let’s Hang Out Sometime” “Waking Up Restrained” “Hanging”See End Notes for comprehensive warnings/tags
Series: SkyLarkin's Whumptober 2020 Fics [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1946617
Comments: 12
Kudos: 35
Collections: Whumptober 2020





	Fear Death by Water

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [Apollosvotive](https://apollosvotive.tumblr.com/)/[lihgtwood](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihgtwood/pseuds/Lihgtwood) and Figure of Dismay ([Tumblr](https://figureofdismay.tumblr.com/)/[Ao3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Figure_of_Dismay)) for beta reading!

Like any Oxford boy at least once during their academic years, Morse had woken up face down on a floor he did not recognize with no recollection of how he got there. Today—or possibly tonight, difficult to tell as the room he was in had no windows—he clawed his way back to consciousness as if being wrenched back to sobriety from a particularly bad hangover only to find himself hovering about three feet or so off the unfamiliar floor.

Glancing up quickly—too quickly it seemed, as all of the blood rushing to his head made his vision swim—revealed that he was currently suspended from a thick-beamed ceiling by his right ankle. Morse’s captor had left his other ankle unbound, tucked behind his right leg in a position that was unnervingly familiar to the detective constable after all of the research he’d been doing on his most recent case. Attempting to move his unbound leg only resulted in a searing jolt of pain, so Morse left it alone for now and took stock of everything else.

His arms were bound behind his back, probably with the same rope used to suspend him from the ceiling. The bindings were tight and expertly done; it was difficult to tell from this angle, but Morse would not be surprised to learn that these were perfect sailor’s knots keeping him in suspense. It narrowed down their list of suspects, but not by much—this was still Oxford, after all. The faint odor of chloroform still lingered about his collar (adding to his general lightheadedness), but as far as Morse could tell, he was otherwise unharmed.

For now, at least. The images of the crime scenes that had stumped Cowley Station CID for the past month (it had been a particularly cruel April) were still fresh in his mind. First there was the tramp, nearly unidentifiable through the collage of blood and bruising after having been beaten to death with a blunt object. (Strange had guessed tyre iron, but DeBryn’s autopsy confirmed Morse and Thursday’s suspicions that a cricket bat was the more likely culprit.) After the beating, the poor sod had been thrown off the bell tower of Magdalen College, traumatizing some poor undergraduate walking back from the pub upon landing.

Then Professor Wirt Oswald, now formerly of Beaufort College, had suddenly come down with an acute case of food poisoning in the middle of dinner. He died at his seat on the high table in front of a crowd of startled students and faculty, blood and vomit all over his shepherd's pie. The most recent victim had been one Sister Gertrude Manfreda of Lady Matilda’s college who had been found strangled, then laid out on the altar of the college chapel like an Old Testament sacrifice.

The three murders seemed completely unrelated at first. The first case had been initially written off as a fight between ruffians that had gotten out of hand, especially once the victim had been identified as a drifter with a criminal record. Bright had sent Morse out to canvas the drunks and homeless while Thursday and Strange had been up at the college trying to draw some connection between the dead academics. They had moved in very different circles, and almost certainly hated each other solely on principal. Otherwise, their murders had seemed just as random as the tramp’s had been.

It wasn’t until Strange had casually mentioned that Prof. Oswald had a secret hobby as a stage magician (something about which one of his students had been attempting to blackmail him), Thursday had uncovered that Sister Manfreda had been fast-tracked to become head of Lady Matilda’s (once her predecessor stepped down in order to avoid a cheating scandal), and Morse had nearly been accosted by a traveler woman waving a handful of cards insistently and raving that he needed to have his fortune told (most likely the result of the whiskey on her breath) that Morse found a way in which all three murders had a commonality: presentation.

“I think ye might’ve overthought this one, matey,” Strange commented after Morse came back from a long session at the Bodleian with his new theory. The rest of the nick certainly was just as skeptical at the notion that the murders had been based upon the first three cards in the Tarot’s Major Arcana: The Fool (Mat Place, the tramp), The Magician (Prof. Oswald), and The High Priestess (Sister Manfreda). A clueless drunk who had “fallen” from a high place, a stage magician who had died at table, and a woman of faith who had come into power. And no one else had put forth a better explanation…

Bright was clearly eager to dismiss Morse’s theory, already quite put out at the thought of _yet another_ serial killer in Oxford with a theme to his killings. But before he could speak, Thursday pointed out that Place’s killer would have to have been a member of the faculty or student body for them to access the bell tower. So it wasn’t totally out of the question that the murderer could have been the same for all, or at least two, of the victims. If all this “Tarot meaning” tosh had been easily accessible to Morse, then anyone with access to the college libraries could have plotted their murders in the same manner…

“Are you saying that if our ex-college boy could think this up, so could some of the other eggheads up at school, sir?” Jakes snarked, with a disdainful smirk towards Morse. Morse glared back at him, but the wind had certainly been taken out of his sails as he handed Thursday the copies he’d made of every circulation card from a Tarot-related book he’d been able to get his hands on in the Bodleian. That barb must have stung more than he’d initially thought because he’d all but stormed out shortly after.

(As he left, Morse couldn’t help but overhear a plaintive complaint from Bright about none of the serial killers in Oxford theming their killing sprees around Bridge, or something that the common man could understand. He could just picture Thursday’s incredulous stare.)

Morse couldn’t recall anything else afterward, so that must have been when his assailant attacked. His right ankle had begun to throb; if he got out of this alive, there would undoubtedly be some nasty bruising. Morse considered his current situation, and his sole source of comfort was that it seemed so far his hypothesis about the murderer’s patterns had been correct. But why had they deviated from the order they had been following up to the letter thus far? Going from the second to the twelfth arcana was a sizable leap—

“My sincerest apologies for leaving you hanging, Detective Constable.” The door at the far end of the room quietly creaked open to reveal a young man with straw-colored hair whom Morse had only seen once before: mid-interview with Strange and Thursday in the aftermath of the third body’s discovery. But his name had been on several of the circulation cards Morse had found (and quite high on his mental list of suspects). His accent marked him as an establishment Etonian, but his ratty coat and scuffed shoes gave the appearance of someone attempting to be Jack the Ripper (for an All Hollow’s Eve party at one of the nicer pubs in town). “Do you know where you currently are?”

“Aside from hanging upside down in a room with a psychopath?” Morse fired back dryly. “Well, I’d wager this isn’t Carthage or Alexandria…” The suspect seemed unamused at the references. ”Enlighten me then.”

Arthur Waite stepped back with an expression of mock affront. “Why, you don’t recognize your own _alma mater_?” he gasped, with venom dripping from the Latin like water from a drenched oar. “How shameful, but I suppose that’s to be expected of a dropout like yourself. And to think I specifically brought you here out of our shared connection to dear old Lonsdale…”

Ah, so his kidnapping had been more than just a coincidence then. Morse had a quip about not having memorized the _floors_ of his former college like some kind of lunatic—thank you very much—but it was lost as a sudden dizzy spell overtook him. It did not help that when the world came back into focus, the first thing in his line of sight was the knife in Waite’s hand, glistening in the lamplight.

‘ _Focus_ ,’ he told himself as he tried to flex his left foot discreetly, in hopes of getting some feeling back into it again. Just like any typical Lonsdale student, Waite surely must have the characteristic inability to back down from a debate… He had to keep Waite talking, get him to implicate himself in the other three killings more…

And also to stab him less…

“I’m no expert on Tarot,” Morse began (the “and I don’t see why another Classics major like yourself would be either” was implied), “but which of the decks goes from The High Priestess to The Hanged Man immediately afterward? Especially after following The Fool and The Magician as per the usual order?”

“Circumstances led to a mandatory deviation from the traditional order, this is true,” Waite muttered quickly, seemingly to himself rather than Morse. “But it doesn’t matter: I alone decide the course of fate, not the cards. The police will only be further befuddled and useless to stop me.”

His piercing ice-blue eyes were suddenly level with Morse’s, and the detective constable had to fight the urge to back away as much as he could in his current position. “I read about your involvement in the Mason Gull case,” he continued, voice growing more manic by the syllable. “I knew if any copper in the city stood a chance of uncovering my designs, it had to be someone who had a minimum _applied_ himself to higher education. One must be so careful these days.”

Morse grit his teeth at yet another mention of his failed academic pursuits. “Is that why I’m The Hanged Man, then?” he asked, now meeting Waite’s gaze unwaveringly. “You’ve branded me a traitor to the college for dropping out, and hanging was traditionally the punishment of traitors? Well, you’ve overlooked the Norse interpretation: perhaps I’m Odin, suspended from a tree in order to gain insight.”

“And what insight might that be?” Waite asked with a patronizing grin as he stood up. “My guilt? I hate to disappoint you, Detective Constable, but I’m afraid you’ll be taking that information with you to your grave tonight. No, the traditional symbolism of The Hanged Man is one of uncertainty towards his position in life, lack of direction, and sacrifice.”

“To me, that just seems like an excuse to brush aside the fact that you were almost caught,” Morse couldn’t help but scoff. “Do you expect me to believe that you murdered Place (judging by the confusion on Waite’s face at the mention of this name, he hadn’t even bothered to learn the poor bastard's name before beating his face in), Professor Oswald, and Sister Manfreda solely for the _symbolism_? And not because you needed to establish an alibi for the next murder? Or hide your failing grade when the Professor refused your bribes to change it to a passing one—and then to hide the evidence of your attempted bribery—probably because _Father dearest_ would have cut you off from your allowance?”

(Morse had been purely guessing for that last accusation, but the enraged expression on Waite’s face told him he’d been right on the money.)

“Or to silence a witness to one of your previous murders, respectively? You were quite sloppy with that last one; you’ve probably left enough witnesses to account for the rest of the Major Arcana—”

“Shut up!” Morse’s rebuke ended in a yell as Waite lashed out with the knife. Lucky for him, it had been a slash across his midsection instead of a stab yet again (if he survived, he owed DeBryn another drink...) and a rather shallow one at that—clearly not intended as a killing blow. Even so, Morse quickly looked away from the growing bloom of red spreading across his shirt as he began to feel light-headed once again…

Distantly, he thought he heard a door slam open somewhere in the building…

“Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head!?” Waite roared, bringing Morse back to the present. He grabbed a fistful of Morse’s hair and adjusted his grip on the knife. The deranged student might have kept rambling on about his plans or self-aggrandizing “symbolism”, but Morse couldn’t hear it over the sudden ringing in his ears as he realized Waite’s intended fate for him. A slit throat while hanging upside down would lead to asphyxiation due to the excess blood in his throat. Drowning in midair—how terribly poetic… and pretentious.

Morse readied his left leg to strike. He only had one shot at this… just waiting for the right moment…

“Oxford City Police! Drop the weapon!”

The door slammed open and several things happened in tandem. As Waite stabbed downwards, Morse swung his free leg out as far as he could manage—not enough to injure Waite in the slightest, but enough to knock him off balance just a bit. Waite reflexively turned around to face the intruders just in time to catch a .45mm to the forehead courtesy of Thursday. His body hit the ground with an unceremonious thud, with the bloodstained knife clattering to a stop several feet away.

“Morse!”

“What the– hang on matey!”

To Morse, both Thursday and Strange had sounded as if they were shouting at him from underwater. He hoped that knocking Waite’s knife off course had kept the blade from nicking an artery, but he couldn’t be sure—there was so much blood all over the floor, and Morse had no idea how much of it was his. The room was spinning and someone was screaming about a stepladder before a burst of pain overwhelmed his senses as someone sensible finally applied pressure to his neck and everything mercifully faded to black.

**Author's Note:**

> And... that's my first ever Endeavour fic, as well as my first fic on Ao3! Constructive criticism is appreciated (especially Brit-picking)! 
> 
> Triggers/Warnings: Blood, Death, Brief mention of vomit, Impalement, Gun


End file.
